Ex-CIA Engineer Convicted in Biggest Theft Ever of Agency Secrets (nytimes.com) 50
A former Central Intelligence Agency software engineer was convicted by a federal jury on Wednesday of causing the largest theft of classified information in the agency's history. From a report: The former C.I.A. employee, Joshua Schulte, was arrested after the 2017 disclosure by WikiLeaks of a trove of confidential documents detailing the agency's secret methods for penetrating the computer networks of foreign governments and terrorists. The verdict came two years after a previous jury failed to agree on eight of the 10 charges he faced then.
At the earlier trial, Mr. Schulte, 33, was found guilty of contempt of court and of making false statements to the F.B.I. He was convicted on Wednesday on nine counts, which included illegally gathering national defense information and illegally transmitting that information. Damian Williams, the United States attorney in Manhattan, where the trial was held, hailed the verdict. Mr. Schulte has been convicted of "one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history," Mr. Williams said in a statement.
At the earlier trial, Mr. Schulte, 33, was found guilty of contempt of court and of making false statements to the F.B.I. He was convicted on Wednesday on nine counts, which included illegally gathering national defense information and illegally transmitting that information. Damian Williams, the United States attorney in Manhattan, where the trial was held, hailed the verdict. Mr. Schulte has been convicted of "one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history," Mr. Williams said in a statement.
Most brazen yourself (Score:4, Funny)
In the game of countries, everybody spies, but some, well, er, more than others. The various independent kindoms inside the US government are pretty brazen.
But did they just shop around juries until they got a conviction, or what?
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Re:Most brazen yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
But did they just shop around juries until they got a conviction, or what?
It's not uncommon for one retrial following a hung jury.
Re:Most brazen yourself (Score:5, Informative)
The term "spying" is applied to people covertly working for their countries. When one works against his own, the term is usually "treason".
Either a conviction or an acquittal.
Re:Most brazen yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
No, treason in the US Constitution is fairly specific and spying (per se) isn't in that definition.
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Giving information to Wikileaks is certainly not war, and unless Wikileaks is a named enemy, it is not adhering to any specific enemy, nor does it give them aid or comfort. And unless there are two specific witnesses to the act of handing the documents over (which seems unlikely) the person cannot be accused or convicted of treason.
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Semantics...
Yep, right there...
It is not. It is giving Aid (and, perhaps, even Comfort) to enemies, because the betrayal helped foreigners defend themselves against America's spying efforts.
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They couldn’t even convict the Rosenbergs on treason.
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No one arrested over January 6th 2021 events has even been accused (much less convicted) of insurrection either. Yet, the term is thrown around by you and yours all the time...
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But quite a few have been indicted for seditious conspiracy, and at least one that I know of pled guilty to it. That is tantamount to insurrection, as sedition is inciting an insurrection.
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If the "tantamount to" is acceptable, then my use of the word "treason" is affirmed too — and the various opponents' attempts to impeach it on legalistic grounds can be thrown out.
Thank you.
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If you did research into the DC jails that they are being kept in, you would understand why they plead guilty. The use would call jails like it other countries a crime against human rights. Additionally, a black man in the south during the height of segregation had a better chance at a impartial jury then any of the DC defendants.
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The US
(Spelling correction)
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All English is a matter of semantics. It's why it's usable as a language. Your point?
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No, treason in the US Constitution is fairly specific and spying (per se) isn't in that definition.
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Giving information to Wikileaks is certainly not war, and unless Wikileaks is a named enemy, it is not adhering to any specific enemy, nor does it give them aid or comfort. And unless there are two specific witnesses to the act of handing the documents over (which seems unlikely) the person cannot be accused or convicted of treason.
But giving info to enemies by transmitting that info via Wikileaks could easily be construed as giving aid and comfort to the nation's enemies. This is possible even if Wikileaks, the internet, or other media are not enemies per se.
Sort of like a spy saying that he only dropped off the set of stolen documents into the prearranged trash can and that the trash can is not an enemy of the state.
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A spy putting documents into a pre-arranged drop point is transferring them to the person they pre-arranged the drop point with. A person placing documents in the hands of Wikileaks is NOT transferring them to any specific person. Rather, they're making them public. That's its own crime, but it isn't aiding and abetting enemies in the sense clearly defined under the Constitution.
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In the game of countries, everybody spies, but some, well, er, more than others. The various independent kindoms inside the US government are pretty brazen.
But did they just shop around juries until they got a conviction, or what?
Others have pointed out that in the USA you can get retried if there is a hung jury. It's worth noting that his defense may have been pretty bad. I read one summary of the case elsewhere where it seems that it was seriously argued along the lines of "Hundreds of other people were doing the same data copying, so why single out me?" That's the old "But judge, everybody else was speeding so writing me a ticket is unfair!" argument. That never works.
Very convenient they found CP on his machine (Score:1, Troll)
But I'm sure it's nothing, just like Brennan's team totally didn't spy illegally on the Senate and Sharyl Attkisson was just high AF on LSD when she saw someone take over her keyboard and mouse pointer and start deleting content she was working on.
I mean this is Murica, FFS. It's not like we have an unaccountable national security state that frequently even succeeds in keeping federal law enforcement from being able to investigate allegations of clear, serious, felony conduct.
Re:Very convenient they found CP on his machine (Score:4, Insightful)
Her delete key was stuck [thehill.com].
Also, it's funny how she claimed the Obama administration was treating journalists like "enemies of the state" yet has no problem when the con artist and his supporters openly attack reporters and/or bar them from attending meetings or press conferences.
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They’re censoring me! screamed the man who’s house had a room dedicated to talking with the media.
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> Her delete key was stuck
Dude, your comment glows. You know computers. You would believe that this is a stuck delete key?
https://www.politico.com/blogs... [politico.com]
Have you ever used a Macintosh?
If the investigation had concluded it was fraud, that would be believable. Or taken in by an Indian 'calling' from the IRS. Total boomer move. But it didn't.
The delete key story has no credibility and is easily contradicted by the evidence. Drop the ideological blinders.
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I'm a boomer, and I resent that remark. I doubt that you realize it, but the first modern computers were invented, built and used by members of The Greatest Generation, and their work, both in hardware and software was carried on and developed into what we have now mostly by boomers. I think it's safe to say that if it weren't for boomers, there wouldn't have been a computer revolution, or at least, not one that went so far or so fast. Show a little respect to your elders and remembe
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Re:What woudl happen if... (Score:4, Insightful)
People would simply declare it fake news because they couldn't deal with the fact that they have believed all the harebrained bullshit they've been fed.
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Boy if that ain't true, the sky ain't blue, sometimes.
I first encountered the notion of the settled belief set on The Slashdot, of all places, years ago... it boggled the mind that there were folks so entrenched in their beliefs that new information, especially contrarian information, was rejected out of hand.
The first tenet of advancing intelligence is that some of the things you know today will be wrong tomorrow. No matter how smart or confident or handsome you are; you are not infallible. That's Okay. Ne
Biggest theft ever of agency secrets ... (Score:1)
... that anyone is willing to admit publicly.
Truth hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like the Minions of 4Chan have entered the chat.
Paywall news articles on front page... (Score:3)
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By posing the questions, it shows you don't understand how Slashdot works.
You are supposed to read the article, fill in the gaps about the subject from your imagination and then argue about the article in the comments section!
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Aren't supposed to!! Stupid typo! Whole statement doesn't work with that typo!
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I smell a setup... (Score:2, Insightful)
....to put him away for a long time
"Mr. Schulte still faces a federal trial stemming from what prosecutors say were more than 10,000 images and videos of child pornography that federal agents found on electronic devices in his home in the course of the Vault 7 investigation"
Not credible that someone with his knowledge & skills who worked for the CIA just had this lying around unencrypted
Re:I smell a setup... (Score:5, Informative)
Not credible that someone with his knowledge & skills who worked for the CIA just had this lying around unencrypted
But it was encrypted... Not only was it encrypted, it was stored inside of an encrypted virtual machine, but also inside of an encrypted volume inside of the VM. The CP was then apparently neatly organized by preference in a series of folders in the encrypted volume.
However, all of that encryption didn't count for much when he had terrible operational security... he stored all of his passwords on his phone unencrypted, which he gave to them unlocked. doh.
The New Yorker [newyorker.com] has a decent article about him and the whole case.
Orange Book (Score:4, Interesting)
Under the Orange Book standard for B-level security, information cannot be obtained by another person without the necessary clearance and cannot be transferred either to a user who lacks that clearance or to a device that is not certified as supporting the necessary multi-level security protocols for both users and devices.
Since the data was copied off, one must ask why the CIA thought it could use devices that did not meet the necessary security standard for such information. Even though the Orange Book is no longer mandatory, it is still one of the best standards out there for mandatory access controls for hardware, storage, processes, and users alike.
Indeed, modern standards are arguably tighter than Orange Book. Even the lowest levels in infosec have Class III certificates to validate their identity to the software, much of which has moved off personal computers and onto central servers (thanks be to the Great God Citrix), allowing for far stricter access controls. Even modern monitors for such uses are designed to not be visible at any measurable angle beyond that which the user can reasonably be expected to view the monitors at.
If the CIA lost the information through sheer negligence despite knowing better, one can reasonably argue that deliberate and wanton failure to properly secure information is just as much of a crime as the stealing of it.
Frankly, I'd want to see the IT department head before a tribunal on charges of wilfully aiding and abetting the enemy through incompetent security policies.
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> one can reasonably argue that deliberate and wanton failure to properly secure information is just as much of a crime as the stealing of it.
It is. As in, that's literally explicitly stated in the statute.
So for example, one would/should go to prison if you take a bunch of classified information home and store it on your home server, in your basement, managed by an idiot who asks basic questions about wiping data on Reddit.
And before you ask, yes, one should also go to prison for attempting the violent
Democracy (Score:2)
Add him to the list (Score:2, Troll)
Another American hero facing political persecution for leaking information the government was hiding from the People it works for. Because essentially our government agencies were (and are) have rebelled against the sovereign (aka the people) and assumed the crown for themselves. If it a shame our Republic has fallen to this.
Joshua Schulte
Edward Snowden
Julian Assange
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I swear some gremlin runs in behind me and messes with my posts.
Another American hero facing political persecution for leaking information the government was hiding from its employer, The People. Essentially our government agencies were and are in a state of rebellion against the sovereign (aka The People) and have assumed the crown for themselves. It is a shame our republic has fallen to this.
Joshua Schulte
Edward Snowden
Julian Assange
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You know Julian Assange is Australian, right?
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Is he still technically an Australian? Julian Assange has done a bit of moving about. In any case he is an american hero because he has done so much to help reveal our government's crimes to us. Where he comes from or lives is irrelevant. He chose to be an american hero. I imagine the people of more than a few nations should credit him as one of their heroes as well.
+WHISTLEBLOWERS, LAWYERS, ACTIVISTS, POLITICIANS (Score:1)
'bad guys' weren't the only targets... .. the wikileaks disclousres also revealed the stupid policy of hoarding vulnerabilities and weaponising them instead of disclosing them. When hackers got their hands on the cyberweapons this DIRECTLY lead to an avalanche of penetrations using those flaws when hackers got their hands on their tools (and NOT from Wikileaks).
Was a very busy time for me dealing with the fallout of this idiocy.
What we have is a U.S. completely out of control chasing after anyone and everyo